Ahhh. But sayin it

Vice President Cheney was quite long last night with attacks that read like projection, calling his critics "dishonest and reprehensible" for their "cynical and pernicious falsehoods".

But he won't answer the questions.

He won't address the specifics because they're too unrefutable and damning. And that's probably one of the reasons why a decisive majority of American now think he and the president misled them. (Last WSJ/NBC poll, 57% "think that President Bush deliberately misled people to make the case for war.")

So Mr. Cheney can storm and scream all he wants. But he won't answer why he repeatedly misled Americans by claiming that the 9/11 ringleader Mohamad Atta had met with Iraqi intelligence not long before September 11th. Over and over and over. He can't answer that question because there is no answer. By every moral and factual standard, he provided false evidence to the American people. He lied. Over and over and over.

As late as January 2004, he was still trying to convince Americans of the by-then totally discredited 'mobile biological weapons lab' canard.

During the lead up to war, Cheney repeatedly claimed that Iraq was harboring and training al Qaida terrorists -- claims for which there was, at best, no good evidence. (For these and other examples, see this list. For some more fact-checking of the White House, see this article from Knight-Ridder.)

There's nothing more to say to Mr. Cheney than a) answer the questions and b) come clean.